3 Years Ago Today, We Had To Sign Grace's Missouri Abortion Consents. We Are Still Mad.

Three years ago today (November 18, 2016), Jim and I had to sign Missouri’s dangerous, judgmental, tone deaf consents in order to start the 72 hour wait before having our abortion.

These consents asked us if we had had a chance to hear a heartbeat, and see an ultrasound.

We had to sign saying we’d been given the Informed Consent packet, noting that we were terminating a unique and separate human life.

No where in any of this state, NOT medically mandated paperwork was information on the risks to my health by continuing the pregnancy, or data around what Grace would experience if we didn’t have an abortion when we did. No where was there any indication that the state officials that put this paperwork into place trust pregnant people to make decisions for themselves.

Missouri has only gotten worse on this front in the past 3 years: an unconstitutional and unpopular 8 week abortion ban passed earlier this year (it has since been overturned by a judge, which is the whole point: they want it to go to the Supreme Court to overturn/gut Roe v. Wade). When we tried to gather signatures to have a constitutionally guaranteed citizens referendum against it, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft twiddled his thumbs and ran out the clock on providing language for the signature gathering.

None of this is medically necessary, and it just serves to judge and shame pregnant people, including me.

You can see the paperwork we had to sign and read more about how it felt to go through it all right here:

The Day After We Learned about Grace's Disease: Missouri's Abortion Consents and Informed Consent Packet - Defending Grace

I wrote last week on the anniversary of learning that Grace had a life-ending disease , discussing how the day unfolded and felt along the way. It was an enormous blow and shock to the system.